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Organisations cant improve their services because they dont see and understand them the way their customers do.Photo by AbhishekAnandSelf-centred organisationsAccording to Statista, the estimated number of companies is approximately 333.34 million worldwide in 2023. Their goal is to deliver the right products and services to the right users/clients at the right time. Simultaneously, they aim to improve efficiency, set the right priorities, and not duplicate efforts. To achieve this, they measure, monitor, compare, and prioritise. But are they focusing on the rightthings?I recently bought a sim card from a new internet provider. This experience made me think about how organisations operate and how customers are often confronted with internal processes and structures they shouldnt even be awareof.How many times have we experienced how organisations focus on themselveson how they operate, what team delivers what and how to achieve a high Net Promoter Score (NPS). Because they work in silos, their teams and processes are disconnected. Therefore, it becomes our (the customers) responsibility to find the best way to do what we want to do, despite the obstacles and gaps we encounter along theway.Why arent companies bridging these gaps, fixing the lack of connections between systems, and saving the history of our interactions with them in oneplace?Why is this still notworking?Well, it seems like they do not know (or think they know) how the user sees them. They dont have an external reference point. They cant become customer-centric, because they dont see the customer. They only see themselves.Organisations cant improve their services because they dont see and understand them the way their customers do. They simply dont know how (or they dont think is beneficial).I think we are ready to change that and move from Self-Centred to Human-Centred Organisations.What is aservice?According to the UK Government Digital Service, service is everything the user needs to do to achieve a goal. Lou Downe, author of Good Services, a book about how to design services that work, proposes a more broad approach: service is something that helps someone to do something (similar to the Oxford Languages definition: service is the action of helping or doing work for someone).To get service buy-in from stakeholders in a large organisation, we need to add a business perspective to this definition and align the language of talking about service design and the user perspective with the requirements that key stakeholders have.In this context, the definition of service proposed by Kate Tarling seems to be better absorbed by leaders in organisation, while at the same time not compromising the general and broad concept proposedabove.A service helps someone to do or to achieve something, while delivering an outcome for the organisation providing thatservice.Services are intangible, so defining and talking about them can be a challenge. Companies provide hundreds of services and most of the time are not even aware of all of them. Therefore, the first challenge they should set themselves is to create a list of the services they provide (as their customer sees them!). And if you thought for a moment that this would be a simple task, you would be verywrong.List of companyservicesWhy do we need a list of our company services?Creating a list of services helps organisations:Discuss their size and deliverycostEvaluate their performance andoutcomesDetermine if they should exist in their currentformIdentify duplicated patternsAssign ownership and managementAs we can read on the gov.uk blog: Since organisations have many ways of understanding their internal workings and capabilities, this list provides an important external reference that much of the internal work should align to, and work together over time to help achieve desired outcomes.How to define a companys services?It is a good idea to start with what people need, what is important to them, what their goals are in the areas in which our organisation operates.https://hodigital.blog.gov.uk/2018/06/07/creating-a-list-of-services/To dive into this topic, we first need to do a solid investigation and understand what people really do with our products.Start simplefind out the questions people ask when theyre getting referrals from friends, family and colleagues, or even what they type into Google to search for what services theyneed.The next step will be to compare what users are looking for with what we offer. This is when the details will be importantwhether we use the same words, whether we formulate the same questions, or are in the sameplaces.Lets see some examples. In the first sentence below (1) you can see the things the user wants to do. In the second you will find the keywords they type into googlethe service they think will help them achieve what they want to do. In the third point you will find how organisations respond to the users needs and what they call their products and services.Example 1:1) The thing I need to do: My mum wants to have an internet on her iPad2) The service I think exist: Internet for iPad 3) The thing organisation offers: Connect iPad to the internet (apple support) eSim card 10 GBprepaidExample 2:1) The thing I need to do: I want to go to the UK to spend more time with my family.2) The service I think exists: Visit the UK to see family.3) The thing organisation offers: Apply for a standard visitor visa (gov.uk).Users use the language of the servicethey say what they want to do. They dont name products or features, they just try to get things done. This highlights the gap between user expectations and company offerings (another exampleNicholas Zeisler article Are we speaking our Customers language? )What do we do once we have thelist?Once you have a list of what your services are, define why each of them exists and what good looks like. This helps you be clear about how your teams and divisions should organise the internal work more effectively, rectify errors more quickly, improve the quality of services and monitor their effectiveness.Creating a list of services is the first step, but at the same time a continuous, ongoing practice. This is where you should start. But it is only the beginning of this adventure.Transforming self-centred organisations into human-centred ones was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
